By STEPHEN J. GERTZ [Book Patrol | Seattle PI] – ‘The trend toward “modern” rare books that appeal to a new generation, that hold personal significance, that they were raised with and are thus meaningful is gaining further momentum. Dealers who ignore this reality do so at their own risk. There will always be room for the great antiquarian books but the room has gotten smaller.’ (Continued at Book Patrol | Seattle PI)
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An Interview with LESZEK BALCEROWICZ [Center for European Policy Analysis] – ‘The problem with the Euro-Zone has been that larger countries like Germany or France were culpable of first violating the Stability and Growth Pact, which is a fiscal constitution of the Euro-Zone, and then getting it modified. The Stability and Growth Pact should be taken seriously, especially by the larger members of the Euro-Zone.’ (Continued at CEPA | Central Europe Digest)
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By DENIS BOYLES [National Review] – ‘A very minor press flap has erupted over the release of a study by Open Europe, a Euroskeptic group, showing that over a twelve-year span beginning in 1998, regulations — mostly the EU variety — have cost Britain nearly €200 billion, an amount equal to Britain’s current deficit.’ (Continued at National Review Online)
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8 APRIL 2010 – Malcolm McLaren has died in New York, aged 64. As the BBC reports, the punk rock impresario and Sex Pistols manager “was known for his shocking statements, and his ability to manipulate the media” – and a spontaneous moment or two, when it amused him. Example: At a rather unrestrained party held in a Front Street bar in New York in the late 1970s, he and a very famous and normally quite dignified writer and editor were among the last to leave. As they headed for the door, McLaren suddenly declared, in urgent tones, that he’d lost his watch. He convinced his much older companion to look, on hands and knees, under the tables, then joined him. After a few moments, they both began toppling chairs, making a mess, and barking. “We’re mad,” he explained.
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6 APRIL 2010 – The announcement today that the next General Election will be held May 6 may remind some Americans that the “Conservative” party in Britain has very little to do with American conservatism. (Continued.)
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By JAMES BOWMAN [Arma Virumque] – ‘Politicians have always spun and been spun, they always — or nearly always — fail to live up to their most proudly proclaimed intentions. But always before, I thought, they had been subject to a greater or lesser extent to the discipline of a public which would notice this gap and punish them if it grew too large. What we began to find in the 1990s was not that politicians were suddenly engaging in empty rhetoric; it was that people stopped caring that it was empty — and even expected it to be empty.’ (Continued at Arma Virumque | New Criterion.)
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The DAILY TELEGRAPH – Thomas Hardy’s manuscripts have, in the words of the Telegraph, been “saved for the nation” – or, more specifically, for Wessex. What Wessex will do with them is anybody’s guess, but the newspaper’s account of how “a group of Hardy fans from Dorset set about finding the cash” to keep them around has a star in the middle of the tale:
One of the key campaigners was 104-year-old Norrie Woodhall, a member of the original Hardy Players and the last person alive who knew Hardy. In a 1924 adaptation of Tess Of The d’Urbervilles, Hardy personally cast Norrie as Tess’s sister Liza Lu. Norrie trod the boards again during an evening of performance of the author’s works as part of an event to raise money for the New Hardy Players Manuscript Fund. More money was raised through a charity auction, with one of the star lots being Tea with Norrie.
It would be nice to think that one could come to know Hardy by simply reading him. But then one would not necessarily know Norrie, and she seems worth getting to know. Really, Tea with Norrie has a best-selling Albomesque ring to it, no? (Read the story at The Daily Telegraph.)
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By ANDREW FERGUSON [Commentary] – ‘The tiny corner of the New York Times empire where David Barstow works is called the investigative unit. The name has an impressive urgency to it, like the title of a TV spin-off—CSI: Times Investigative Unit. You can imagine guys in Weejuns and khakis getting a hot tip and springing into action, yanking their tweed coats off the backs of chairs and shouting something irreverent and ironical over their shoulders as they bolt for the newsroom door.’ (Continued at Commentary Magazine.)
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David Franks, 'Man of Letters.' By R.R. Rodney Boyce.
By DAVID FRANKS [Exquisite Corpse] – I am not a great painter. I am not dead. There are significant differences between Oskar Kokoschka and myself, yet I must understand him if I am to understand myself. I am not a character in a Beckett play, nor am I an old man who slips on bananas. There are significant differences between Krapp, and myself, but I must understand this character, if I am to avoid being what I might become.
An obsession is not an obsession, no more than an addiction is an addiction with the first shot of whiskey, hit of crack, line of coke, injection of heroin, or broken heart. Time takes time, & obsessions & addictions take time to become manifest. And what is an obsession really? Where to find the line where we trespass into insanity?
Continue reading “Event: Memorial reading for poet David Franks. Still not a great painter.” »
29 JANUARY 2010 – Not all climatologists seek the truth about global warming in comfortable university labs. Some look for evidence of desertification in the field. A dry, dusty, rocky field – in fact, something like a desert. (Continued)
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19 JANUARY 2010 – Today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1798, of Auguste Comte. Comte had little use for journalists – ironic, since it was a class of British “higher” journalists, led by Lewes, Morley and Harrison, who elevated the odd and nearly-unreadable French philosopher to everlasting prominence. And he is still in the news today.
A. Comte
James W. Ceaser, in the Weekly Standard, finds Barack Obama is the unlikely “savior” of Comte’s “Religion of Humanity”:
The 2008 campaign was an event that unfolded on an entirely different plane from ordinary politics. It signaled the emergence on a worldwide scale of the ‘Religion of Humanity,’ for which Obama became the symbol. What Americans have discovered is that being the representative of this transpolitical movement does not fit easily, if it fits at all, with serving as president of the United States… Continue reading “Comte, on his birthday.” »
19 JANUARY 2010 – Today is the anniversary of the birth, in 1798, of Auguste Comte. Comte had little use for journalists – ironic, since it was 19th century British “higher” journalists, led by Fortnightly stalwarts Lewes, Morley and Harrison, who elevated the odd and nearly-unreadable French philosopher to everlasting prominence. And he is still in the news today. (Continued.)
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An earthquake in Haiti.
14 JANUARY 2010 – One of the favorite devices used by political scientists of the literal variety is the “doomsday” clock. According to the Telegraph, they’re resetting the thing today. In view of the rest of the news, especially in Haiti, this overtly political pseudo-scientific gesture seems even more trivial than usual. Nevertheless, if you want to know how close scientists predict we are to the abyss, you can sit on the edge of your seat, bite your nails, and watch it live on the internet. It’s the lab-coat crowd’s version of geezers-in-sneakers watching the Al Gore movie then screaming, “The world’s going to end!”
That part’s true. The world, this one anyway, is going to end. But when and how is the anybody’s-guess part. (Continued)
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11 OCTOBER 2009 – After being diagnosed as “comatose” 23 years ago, doctors finally get it right: He was paralyzed. (Continued)
John Wilkinson’s
Adages for Poetry Students
Chris Miller reviews Chaos and the Clean Line by Stephen Romer
AND Two Essays
by Alan Wall
See also Garin Cycholl’s new review of Vladimir Sorokin’s Blue Lard
Audio archive: Two poems, with an audio track, from Heart Monologues by Jasmina Bolfek-Radovani | Daragh Breen’s Aural Triptych | Hayden Carruth reads Contra Mortem and Journey to a Known Place | Anthony Howell reads three new poems | James Laughlin reads Easter in Pittsburgh and five more | Peter Robinson reads Manifestos for a lost cause, Dreamt Affections, Blind Summits and Oblique Lights
Previous Serials
2011: Golden-beak in eight parts. By George Basset (H. R. Haxton).
2012: The Invention of the Modern World in 18 parts. By Alan Macfarlane.
2013: Helen in three long parts. By Oswald Valentine Sickert.
2016: The Survival Manual by Alan Macfarlane. In eight parts.
2018: After the Snowbird, Comes the Whale, by Tom Lowenstein.
LONDON
Readings in The Room: 33 Holcombe Road, Tottenham Hale, London N17 9AS – £5 entry plus donation for refreshments. All enquiries: 0208 801 8577
Poetry London: Current listings here.
Shearsman readings: 7:30pm at Swedenborg Hall, 20/21 Bloomsbury Way, London WC1. Further details here.
NEW YORK
10 reliable poetry venues in NYC.
· The funeral of Isaac Albéniz
· Coleridge, poetry and the ‘rage for disorder’
· Otto Rank
· Patrons and toadying · Rejection before slips
· Cut with a dull blade
· Into the woods, everybody.
· Thought Leaders and Ted Talks
· How Mary Oliver ‘found love in a breathing machine.’
AND read here:
· James Thomson [B.V.]
A dilemma for educators:
Philosophy and the public impact.
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Michelene Wandor on Derek Walcott and the T.S. Eliot Prize.
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Nick Lowe: the true-blue Basher shows up for a friend.
More daily in
Anthony Howell: The new libertine in exile.
Kate Hoyland: Inventing Asia, with Joseph Conrad and a Bible for tourists.
Who is Bruce Springsteen? by Peter Knobler.
Martin Sorrell on John Ashbery’s illumination of Arthur Rimbaud.
The beauty of Quantitative Easing.
